


Goosebumps

by Kiarawolf



Category: Dear Evan Hansen, Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson, Dear Evan Hansen - musical
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Conner doesn't smoke anything but he wants to, Conner is a ghost, Death, Drug reference, M/M, Suicide, Weed, canon-compliant references to suicide, ghost - Freeform, i guess it's platonic if you squint, nothing spicy here just some arm-touching pretty much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 12:06:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10189556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiarawolf/pseuds/Kiarawolf
Summary: Conner’s dead, but he hasn’t “moved on”, exactly. I suppose this could be platonic if you squint.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my friend Lynn for convincing me to get into this musical !! This is for you Lynn <3

It’s frustrating at first. Conner can see the world, but it can’t see him. There’s a stash of weed in a coin tin underneath his wastepaper basket (clever, right? No one thinks to look in the trash), and there’s a need to mellow his shaking self, but—he can’t. Can’t lift the basket, can’t open the tin, can’t smoke the weed. His hands just drift right on through.

  Staying grounded is his main difficulty. He finds himself floating up around the ceiling all too often, and no amount of kicking or screaming will bring him back down. Only once his anger has burned out can he focus on the feeling of the carpet, and the weight of gravity; if he just imagines that those things still exist for him, and then they do.

  They must’ve taken away his body before he came back. He’s never seen the glazed eyes that he hears his mother sobbing about, never felt the cold hands. He doesn’t know where his body is; it doesn’t matter, really. He’s never felt much of a connection to it. He never thought that he was all that connected to his room, or his family, either; but. Here he is.

  It’s not until the first time Evan sleeps in his room that Conner realises his sense of time isn’t exactly working. Evan— _Evan Hansen_ —walks into Conner’s room, strips down to his boxers, and then slips in-between the sheets before promptly falling asleep. He’s been here before, obviously. Except _Conner’s_ the one who’s been here, and he’s never seen Evan. He’s only left his room for short stints—to haunt his mother or to pull faces at his sister, that sort of thing. The last time Conner saw Evan, Evan had written that stupid letter to try and bait Conner into—into what, exactly? Conner can’t remember.

  Conner moves to his desk chair and focuses on the feel of the leather against his back, the way the edge of the chair digs into his thighs. _Don’t drift out_ , he tells himself. _Stay here_. Maybe if he just _concentrates_ , he’ll be able to stay grounded. He watches Evan, counting the slow ins and outs of his breathing, waiting for the morning.

  Evan’s wearing a cast. “ _Conner_ ” is all it says, in huge loose letters. The memory surfaces; grabbing Evan’s arm, the sharpie squeaking over the plaster. Pretending to be friends.

  Conner’s never been clear on what form they take, exactly, but he’s always had strong feelings about Evan Hansen. Evan’s the school pariah even more than Conner is (well, _was_ ). Some days, it felt like pushing Evan down was the only way to drag himself up. Other days, he’d wanted to—to _something_.

  Suddenly it’s too much.

‘Get out of my bed,’ Conner orders. ‘Get _out_ of _my_ room.’

  Evan’s only reply is a snore.

‘You’re not supposed to be here, this is my room. This is the only thing I have left, you can’t have it. Just because I didn’t want it doesn’t mean you get to have it, get out, get _out_!’

  Evan continues to ignore him, so Conner lunges at the bed, reaching for Evan’s feet, reaching to drag him out—but the rage creates a turbulence that sends him inward and upward. He drifts.

  When he comes back to himself, the room’s empty. Conner tries to stay as present as possible, tries to be here for when Evan comes back. It feels like he fails, though, because the next time Evan arrives, his hair is longer. Evan knows his way around the room like it’s his. There’s a pile of Evan’s spare shirts in the top of Conner’s wardrobe, and a pair of headphones Conner’s not seen before tangled in the corner of Conner’s desk. Worse: the looping letters that spell his name on Evan’s cast have faded. They’ve rubbed almost completely away.

  _Keep present_ , Conner orders himself, _stay here_.

  It’s hard to do when Zoe pokes her head through his door. Evan laughs at something she says, and crosses the room to give her a kiss before she ducks out again. Evan stands there behind the shut door, the smile so much a part of his face that it almost looks carved into his bones.

‘No,’ Conner yells. ‘ _Not_ my sister. No, you disgusting piece of—’ He resists the temptation to rush at Evan with fists raised, concentrating instead on juggling his weight from one foot to another, pretending that the weight even exists in the first place. It works. The haze settles.

  Evan’s smile is interrupted by a yawn, and he moves towards the bed. Off comes his shirt, and Conner suddenly feels a creep—but he doesn’t look away. There has to be some perks to being dead, right? _Not that perving on Evan Hansen is a perk,_ he laughs to himself.

  _…Right?_

  Evan gets under the covers and turns off all the lights except the reading lamp on Conner’s beside table. He’s got a magazine with him. _Forest Monthly: Pine and Conifer_ reads the front cover. Under his breath, Evan reads it out-loud. The words are so quiet, Conner has to lay down to hear them. The jargon and the jokes go over his head, but the tree facts are pretty cool. He closes his eyes and they wash over him, settling his breath and relaxing his bones. Eventually, he feels so calm that he swears he can actually _feel_ the coarse cotton sheets against his skin, actually _feel_ the radiating warmth of Evan’s body besides him.

  Evan’s reading stutters, and Conner sits up. ‘Can you feel me?’ He asks—begs. But Evan just chuckles to himself, shaking his head like he’s brushing away a stray thought, and goes back to reading.

  The next morning, Evan insists on sleeping for long after the sun’s risen. Conner watches him while he waits. There’s nothing else to do, after all.

‘Why are you here?’ Conner asks. Evan doesn’t answer, and Conner wonders if the question had actually been for himself. What’s keeping him here? Shouldn’t he have “moved on” by now? Whatever form that takes. Wasn’t that the whole point of snuffing it? To get out of this place? But here he is.

   _Why are you here?_

  Evan leaves and comes back more times than Conner can count. Sometimes Conner feels so distant that he can’t even hear Evan talk, like he’s watching Evan move about his room and interact with his sister—and hug his crying mum, and participate in _his life_ — from inside a fishbowl. He’s not sure if the dissociation has just come with him from life, or if it’s part and parcel of being dead.

  Other times, though.

  Other times, Conner can feel the air in the room shifting against him, can hear the under-his-breath chuckles that Evan makes when he thinks of something funny, can feel—he would swear it, Conner can _actually feel_ —the goosebumps that rise up on Evan’s arm when Conner runs a hand along it.

  He tries the same thing with Zoe, when it’s dark and their parent have gone to bed and she’s snuck into Conner’s room to be with Evan. He can’t even get close to her. There’s a wall around her that only he is shut out by.

  But he figures a way around the wall by riding through it with Evan. Conner keeps his hand on Evan’s arm, over the cast where _Conner_ is almost completely rubbed away, and reaches for Zoe with the other… His hand falls through her, like she’s a wastepaper basket.

‘Do you want to get under the blankets?’ Evan asks Zoe, and then immediately adds: ‘N-not that I’m assuming—or _pre_ suming, or, anything—that we were going to do “stuff”, you know, um, just… I’m a little cold?’

  Conner pulls away from Evan, and watches the goosebumps recede. _Stay here, stay here,_ he tells himself, but Evan and his sister are nose-to-nose and giggling, lost in their own private world, their own private happiness, and Conner lets himself drift.

  Evan’s not there when he comes back. Conner doesn’t worry at first, but then a day turns to a week. A month. Conner’s not sure—it could be a year. He’s not present for most of it. Not really. He’s only sure that any time has passed at all because each time he’s aware of his room, it’s changed in some way; there’s more dust, his clothes have been sorted into _throw out_ and _charity_ piles, his stash of weed in the bottom the wastebasket has been discovered and dealt with. Each time he feels himself leaving, he’s less sure that he’s going to be able to come back. There’s nothing here for him to come back _to_.

  And then he’s slammed into the world, a stretched rubber band snapping home. There’s sun, he can feel the warmth of _the sun_! And there are leaves all around him; the trees are only waist height or so, but their whispering sounds are like music. Conner turns around, and of course, there he is, lain out under the branches with a book in his hands: Evan.

  Older, now. The cast is so long gone that the arm where it used to be isn’t even pale anymore.

  Conner settles down next to him, listening to the familiar sound of Evan’s quiet reading. Surprisingly, it’s not a tree book this time; it’s actually one of Conner’s old favourites. Conner recognises the names of the characters, and the dog-eared cover that Evan’s holding. ‘Hey, did you steal that from my room?’ Conner wonders. He shifts around and peers at the bottom of the book; sure enough, there’s his initials down the spine.

  He spots something else, as well.

  A series of familiar, loopy letters are tattooed onto the underside of Evan’s arm.

  Conner touches them, long fingers resting lightly. He can feel the hairs on Evan’s arm, can feel the warmth of his sun-heated skin.

  Evan shivers away the goosebumps that quickly rise. ‘I was wondering when you were coming back,’ he smiles.

The beautiful illustration above is fanart by [sincerely--mee](https://sincerely--mee.tumblr.com/post/159961262354/sincerelymee-i-was-reading-this-great-fic-and-i) on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments make me happy <3


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